Headlines

A study commissioned by the insolvency regulator has called for removing structural inefficiencies in the current auction design pertaining to the rescue of bankrupt micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and putting in place an improved model to boost resolution, the Economic Times of India reported. The study on MSMEs in the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) by Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, favoured the introduction of a single objective auction model where the bidder offering the highest recovery is awarded.

China’s unrelenting housing downturn is forcing the country’s banks to confront a thorny issue: sinking real estate values are pushing millions of mortgages underwater, increasing the risk of losses for lenders and property owners, Bloomberg News reported. Behind the scenes, Chinese bankers and officials are getting creative to contain the fallout. Several state-owned banks have approached cash-strapped borrowers and offered them payment holidays on their mortgages for as long as two years.

The Trump administration will try to resolve as many problems with the ​U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement as it can before July 1, ‌but negotiations to rebalance the trade pact are likely to continue past that deadline, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Greer told an event ​at the Hudson Institute that the U.S. may need to ​take steps to exit the North American trade pact in ⁠order to continue the talks.

As President Trump’s stiff tariffs on China went into effect, a curious thing happened to the metal containers carrying Chinese goods to the United States, the New York Times reported. The average value of the products in a 20-foot container plunged nearly 40 percent from January 2025 to February 2026, according to data compiled by ImportGenius, a trade data provider. Yet the average value of a container headed to the United States from elsewhere in the world remained relatively flat. The reason?

The businessman who masterminded a huge nickel fraud against Trafigura Group was named by Mauritius as the ultimate beneficiary of toxic loans that led to the collapse of a local lender, Bloomberg News reported. Prateek Gupta and entities linked to him received a total of 7.9 billion rupees ($168 million) from Silver Bank in which his wife Ginni Gupta held a 75% share, Premier and Finance Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam told lawmakers on Tuesday.

Brazilian airline Azul said ‌on Monday that Chief Financial Officer Alex ​Malfitani, one of the airline's founders, will step ​down on April 20, with Embraer's ⁠Antonio Carlos Garcia set ​to assume the role, Reuters reported. Garcia served as CFO at ​Embraer, which ​announced his resignation earlier on Monday. Embraer ‌added ⁠that CEO Francisco Gomes Neto will assume the CFO position ​on an ​interim ⁠basis. Read more.

More than 9 million barrels a day of oil production from key Middle Eastern countries are expected to be shut in during April, according to estimates from the US government, as the war in Iran upends global energy markets, Bloomberg News reported. Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain have collectively reduced 7.5 million barrels per day of crude production in March, according to estimates from the US Energy Information Administration’s Short-Term Energy Outlook.

Japan’s households reduced spending for a third straight month even after real wages turned positive, underscoring the fragile state of domestic demand, Bloomberg News reported. Outlays by households adjusted for inflation fell 1.8% in February from a year earlier, a faster decline compared with January’s 1% retreat, the internal affairs ministry reported Tuesday. The weak year-on-year data underscore the challenges for Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi as she attempts to buoy domestic demand with fiscal steps meant to soften the blow from rising prices.

Gautam Adani, India's second richest person, will ask a ‌U.S. judge to dismiss the Securities ‌and Exchange Commission's civil fraud case against him, his lawyers ​said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani were charged by the SEC in November 2024 with orchestrating a scheme to pay or promise ‌to pay hundreds ⁠of millions of dollars in bribes to Indian government officials to benefit ⁠Adani Green Energy, where both men are executives and directors.

Mexico’s nationwide trucker and farmer strike stretched into a second day Tuesday, with ongoing highway blockades, mounting congestion around Mexico City and continued disruptions to key freight corridors across the country, Freight Waves reported. What began Monday as a coordinated protest across at least 20 states has evolved into a prolonged logistics disruption, with some transport groups signaling the strike could continue until the federal government delivers concrete security and cost relief measures.